The stories behind the buildings, statues and other points of interest that make Manhattan fascinating.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Lamb & Rich's Intriguing 1891 No. 341 West End Avenue

The massive home at the southwest corner of 76th Street and West End Avenue was one of a row of 14 designed by Lamb & Rich in 1890 -- photo by Alice Lum

In 1861 18-year old Frederick Halsey Man graduated from City
College. The ambitious and determined
young man entered the Columbia Law School, intent on a career as an
attorney. But the Civil War interrupted his
plans.

In 1862 he left school to volunteer for three months’
service for the Union. Upon his discharge in September 1862 he had risen to the
rank of corporal of the 22nd New York Militia. His three-month stint would become three
years, however; for he was immediately commissioned a captain in the 79th
United States Colored Infantry. Two
years later, in August 1864, he was transferred to the 84th United
States Colored Infantry.

When the war finally ended, he was brevetted a major “for
faithful and meritorious service.” Frederick
H. Man resumed his studies at Columbia, receiving his legal degree in 1865. As the century drew to a close, he was a well-known and respected
lawyer, a partner in the legal firm of Anderson & Man and a member of
several clubs.

In 1890, while Frederick Man was growing successful,
architects Lamb & Rich were commissioned to design a fanciful row of fourteen
houses along West End Avenue in the burgeoning Upper West Side. Stretching from West 76th Street
to 77th Street, they were an eclectic mix of styles; but the
architects craftily repeated details and motifs to ensure that they blended as
a unified string.

This photograph of the house shortly after completion was published in American Architect and Building News (copyright expired)

The anchor of the block was the massive limestone chateau at
the corner of West End Avenue and 76th Street. Spiky carved
French Renaissance panels with semi-attached finials adorned the windows,
copper clad dormers with conical tiled roofs jutted from the 76th
Street side, while a Gothic-inspired copper cornice echoed that of the next
door neighbor on West End Avenue. Perhaps
most surprising and amusing were the small, rectangular columns on either side
of the bay windows. Chubby cherubs uphold
the columns on which ferocious lions sit.

photo by Alice Lum

Because the entrance door atop the side-hugging stoop was
quite definitely on West 76th Street, the house had the confusing
distinction of having two addresses: No.
301 West 76th Street and No. 341 West End Avenue—no doubt a
nightmare to letter carriers and visitors alike.

The row was completed in 1891 and Frederick Man purchased
the imposing house on the corner. By now
the attorney could afford a country retreat in Budd’s Lake, New Jersey as well. His
idyllic road would get bumpy when he met Clara Barton Hunter, an actress, in
1897.

The woman was a member of the Empire Theatre stock company
and sought Man’s advice regarding property she owned. After visiting his office a few times, the
attorney asked for the privilege of calling on her at her home. “After that there followed numerous dinners
and entertainments,” according to The New York Times, and “This continued for
two years, when Mrs. Hunter was not on the road playing.”

Neither party seemed to mind that Man was married at the
time.

In August 1899 the actress (who had been divorced from
Francis Dill Hunter, Jr. in 1896) spent a week at Man’s country house. His sister-in-law, Mrs. Josephine Fuller
Krotel was there as well, maintaining propriety. According to Hunter, it was during this stay
that the attorney proposed to her, saying he was in the process of divorcing
his wife.

She told Man she “desired a sufficient time to elapse between
the granting of the decree to him and his remarriage, so that gossips would
have no chance to talk.”

Apparently that worked for Man, for when she finally pressed
him to marry her he said he was not financially able to support a wife and “thought
that he ought to remain single.” Clara Hunter sued the attorney for $50,000 saying “Mr. Man
has acted contemptibly, and has put me in a false position with my friends.”

Man sold the house to Louis G. H. Murphy. An insurance agent, Murphy was killed when he
left the Metropole Café on East 42nd Street with a friend on the
evening of October 7, 1899. Across the
street the new Pabst Building was being constructed and the elevator shaft to
the sub-basement was open, guarded by an iron bar. As the pair tried to pass by, Murphy fell
into the opening, plunging 35 feet to his death.

Orlando Porter Dorman lived here next. Dorman was a warden of the Church of the Holy
Spirit on 57th Street who traced his family through New England
colonists to English and Norman French families. His father’s family first arrived in America
in 1631 and his mother’s family came in 1621 on the next ship after the
Mayflower.

Dorman began his business career as salesman in a Hartford,
Connecticut store and three years later, after he “became of age,” he was taken
in as a partner. Eventually he moved to
New York, opened his own brokerage firm O. P. Dorman & Co., and other
businesses, finally organizing the Gilbert Manufacturing Company that made
dress goods and linings. The company
grew to one of the most prominent in the world and increased Dorman’s fortune.

In March 1901 he married the wealthy widow Mrs. Emma
Underhill Harper and the newlyweds announced to well-wishers through The New
York Times that they “will be ‘at home’ on Thursday evening, April 18.”

The hulking house at No. 341 West End Avenue continued to
pass quickly through new hands as Dorman transferred title on January 10, 1902
to Frank Moyan, with a hefty mortgage of $80,000. The next year in June Colonel Robert C.
Clowry purchased the house. At the time
Clowry was the President and General Manager of the Western Union Telegraph
Company.

Western Electrician magazine said of him that same year “He
is a man of keen intellect, progressive and broad-minded, with fine executive
ability and wide experience with men and affairs.” The magazine nearly ran out of glowing
adjectives. “Withall, he is a cultured, high-minded,
kindly gentleman with a horizon broad enough to embrace a sympathetic interest
in all things that tend to make life better worth living.”

Clowry lived here for nearly a decade, selling the house in
December 1910 to Eberhard Faber “the pencil king.” Faber stayed on for twenty years, eventually
leasing the house on December 4, 1930.

Before long, like so many of the grand homes of the Upper
West Side, No. 341 was divided into apartments.

In September 1940 Russian composer and pianist Alexandre Gretchaninoff
and his wife moved in. Sitting on the sofa here a month later, Mrs. Gretchaninoff
told a reporter “We have been through two revolutions and two wars and we have
lost two homes. Our life is too much
story for one life.”

Indeed, Gretchaninoff was already an established composer
when the revolution of 1917 jolted Moscow.
A student of Rimsky-Korsakoff, he celebrated the government’s overthrow
by composing the “Hymn of Free Russia.”
But his delight at the new establishment soon faded.

He refused to compose revolutionary music, saying “it was
morally impossible.” Finally in 1922 the
pair left for Paris. But the Second
World War forced them to flee again. In the
house on West End Avenue he followed a new routine. He worked all morning on his sixth symphony,
took a walk after lunch, rested, worked again until dinner then spent the
evening “with friends or books.”

The big stone house was perfect for the composer. “This house is very quiet,” Mrs.
Gretchaninoff remarked to The New York Times.
“He can play the piano all the day and nobody says anything.”

Although the red tile roof was removed in 1983, the house
with an amazingly interesting list of owners remains virtually unchanged since
1891.